Remote sensing of ocean surface currents: a review of what is being observed and what is being assimilated
Ocean currents play a key role in Earth's climate – they impact almost any process taking place in the ocean and are of major importance for navigation and human activities at sea. Nevertheless, their observation and forecasting are still difficult. First, no observing system is able to prov...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Copernicus Publications
2017-10-01
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| Series: | Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics |
| Online Access: | https://www.nonlin-processes-geophys.net/24/613/2017/npg-24-613-2017.pdf |
| Summary: | Ocean currents play a key role in Earth's climate – they impact almost any
process taking place in the ocean and are of major importance for navigation
and human activities at sea. Nevertheless, their observation and forecasting
are still difficult. First, no observing system is able to provide direct
measurements of global ocean currents on synoptic scales. Consequently, it
has been necessary to use sea surface height and sea surface temperature
measurements and refer to dynamical frameworks to derive the velocity field.
Second, the assimilation of the velocity field into numerical models of ocean
circulation is difficult mainly due to lack of data. Recent experiments that
assimilate coastal-based radar data have shown that ocean currents will
contribute to increasing the forecast skill of surface currents, but require application in multidata assimilation approaches to better identify the
thermohaline structure of the ocean. In this paper we review the current
knowledge in these fields and provide a global and systematic view of the
technologies to retrieve ocean velocities in the upper ocean and the
available approaches to assimilate this information into ocean models. |
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| ISSN: | 1023-5809 1607-7946 |